Semi Annual Friends and Family Tour, Spring of '15

It has been awhile since our last post, and while there has been lots going on in our social lives, our poor boat is still sitting in limbo. Despite multiple phone calls and internet queries, neither Brad nor our transmission repair guy has been able to locate a new transmission for us. So, our boat has been sitting disabled at the marina for over two weeks now, with no end in sight. Luckily, yesterday, our luck changed....kind of. Our repair guy called and said he had decided to do a complete rebuild of our transmission using new parts. He had ordered them from Japan and hoped they would come in within the next two weeks. Add another week for the actual rebuild and another week for shipping and the actual reinstallment of the transmission on our boat and it looked like it would be another 3-4 weeks of being here in Dataw. While we were excited to finally hear that a solution had been found, we were less than thrilled at the prospect of being here that much longer.

Dataw has been fabulous - friendly, caring people abound and now with our spiffy new A/C, we are comfortably biding our time. But, we are car-less and there is nothing within ten miles of our little marina - literally nothing. So, here we sit, plotting out our next big move and waiting to see when things will be resolved. But we are hopeful! At least there is starting to be a dim light visible at the end of the tunnel!

Meanwhile, our social life has been great! (Not in Dataw - we are the only liveaboards and often we will go an entire day without seeing another person!) But if you remember from my last post eons ago, we decided to hit the road and start our semi annual friends and family tour early. Usually we wait until we are settled in one spot before we do this, but with the heat, this seemed like the perfect time. So we loaded our kids and our possessions into a rental car and headed out!


We have the best little travelers!!

We had so much fun catching up with everyone (and soaking in their A/C and running water) and were happy to be able to spend so much time with people since we were not on a strict schedule. We made it to Franklin to see my family first, then on to Baltimore to visit Brad's family and to meet our perfectly adorable little niece, Liliana, who we couldn't get enough of!

After seeing family, we starting trying to squeeze in as many friends as we could - Columbia and Richmond were next to meet up with some of my fantastic college girlfriends and then down to Corolla to see our home away from home and spend some time with the ever fabulous Defeo clan.

**Disclaimer: I was a terrible tourist this trip and hardly took any pictures! So sorry for the lack of photos in this post! I will do better next time!


We rounded the trip out with a tour of the North Carolina water front in hopes that we would find a new port to call home. We were surprised that none of the North Carolina towns had much to offer in terms of boater friendliness and convenience and even more surprised when we found that our two favorite cities actually ended up being Little River and Charleston, both in South Carolina. After a few days stay in Myrtle Beach to recharge our batteries, we headed back to the boat.

Although we love our road trips and enjoy our time catching up with all our friends and family, we were all happy to be back in our little floating home and have been soaking up our little slice of heaven.